Colombia Rebels Free Kidnapped Lawmaker

Seeking to jump-start peace
talks with the government, Colombia’s second-largest Marxist
rebel group on Tuesday freed another hostage seized in the
hijacking of a commercial airliner 17 months ago.

Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels handed
over Juan Manuel Corzo, a congressman who represents the ruling
Conservative Party, to members of a commission led by former
presidential candidate Horacio Serpa. The ad hoc panel was
summoned to retrieve Corzo from a war zone in the country’s
northern Bolivar province.

Corzo was one of four hostages still being held since April
of last year, when ELN gunmen commandeered an Avianca airlines
commuter plane moments after takeoff from a provincial capital
and forced it to land near one of the rebel army’s jungle
strongholds.

The ELN has demanded ransoms for some of the kidnap
victims. But most of the plane’s original 41 passengers and
crew were freed last year. One died, while in captivity, of
what the ELN described as heart failure.

Corzo, who complained of a knee injury in a telephone
interview with the RCN television network, said he was in good
shape.

But he dodged a question of whether a ransom had been paid
for his freedom, saying only that “there are certain matters
that depend on other parties.”

Appealing for the release of the remaining hostages, two of
whom are women, Corzo said all were suffering from low morale.

“I wouldn’t wish this on any Colombian,” he said.

Nearly two years after the government launched slow-moving
negotiations with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), no date has been set for opening peace talks
with the ELN.

But President Andres Pastrana has clearly warmed to the
ELN’s call for negotiations and government representatives held
preliminary yet inconclusive talks with the smaller rebel force
in July in Geneva.

Before then, Pastrana had put negotiations with the ELN on
the back burner largely because of the hijacking and ELN
abduction in May 1999 of around 160 worshippers from a Catholic
church in the southwest city of Cali.

Tuesday’s release of Corzo followed a meeting in Paris on
Monday between Pastrana’s peace commissioner, Camilo Gomez, and
the ELN’s No. 2 commander, Antonio Garcia.

The officials also met with mediators from Cuba, Spain,
Norway, Switzerland and France who plan to pay a fact-finding
visit to Colombia in a few weeks time, France’s Foreign
Ministry said.

About 3,000 abductions were reported in Colombia last year,
most blamed on the country’s entrenched guerrillas who use
ransoms to help bankroll an uprising that has taken more than
35,000 lives since 1990.